


The Sting

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Drug Dealers shouldn't be cute, F/M, Fluff, it should be the law or something, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 08:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14996912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: It's his very first undercover operation, and Cisco is determined not to mess it up. So he probably shouldn't be noticing how darn cute that drug dealer is. After all, he's going to have to arrest her in a few minutes.





	The Sting

**Author's Note:**

> For Killervibe Fanfic Week 18: Undercover Missions Day. Apologies for any inaccuracy in the depiction of cop stuff. Most of what I know comes from Brooklyn 99.

Cisco fished his phone out of his pocket and checked the text message again. The German poetry section, it said.

Just his luck he had to get a literate drug dealer.

He huffed out a sigh and checked the library’s floor plan. German poetry was on the third floor, off in a corner. Well, okay. That made sense, vis-a-vis illegal activity.

He took the stairs to work off some of the nervous energy. His heart was beating way too fast. _Chill, man_ , he ordered himself. _You’re just a regular college student hoping to score some drugs. You are definitely not a cop working your first undercover sting. Think college-student thoughts. Um, midterms, beer, parties, getting laid._

He sighed a little. He’d been working so much lately that he hadn’t so much as flirted with his favorite barista.

Whatever. Get him through this and he had a long weekend coming up. Then he could flirt with whoever he wanted.

The third floor was quiet at this time of the semester. Finals were still a month away, so only the really hardcore students were here on a Friday afternoon.

Hardcore students and drug dealers.

According to the text message, his contact would be wearing a blue shirt. That was it. Blue shirt. Female? Male? Young, old? Race, height, hair color? Nope, just a blue shirt. It was probably smart if some uniform came tromping through here, fired up to arrest the drug dealer. What, me, officer? I wasn’t aware that wearing a blue shirt was a _crime_ now.

He grinned to himself. Good thing he was smarter.

He slowed his pace and strolled down the aisle between tall bookshelves, running his finger along yellowing spine labels. Just looking for some good German poetry.

As he walked, he peered through the gaps over the books until he got a good view of the corner where two big plate-glass windows met. It was a tiny nook, just enough space for two tables. Only one of them was occupied, by a white girl bent over a thick, old-looking book. She was cute too, with a reddish-brown ponytail and a serious expression.

And, he noticed belatedly, a blue shirt.

Her?

If she was a drug dealer, he was a frickin’ comic-book superhero.

But then she reached over for her phone, checking the screen for the time. He glanced at his own screen. He was three minutes late for the rendezvous, and she was the only person here, and she was clearly waiting on someone. So, Occam’s razor, et cetera.

When he looked back at her, she was flicking her bouncy ponytail over her shoulder. Probably some sorority sister, selling Adderall for beer money. What a waste of time. Maybe he shouldn’t even bother busting her.

_Hold up,_ said a voice very like his mentor’s. Joe West constantly told him he needed to think things through. _Even if she is just selling her spare scrips, she could be an in.  
_

UCC and the surrounding neighborhoods had a meth problem, and the university police had turned this over to CCPD for a reason. If he ignored a possible foot in the door, he might put the investigation back weeks.

She rolled her shoulders, checked her phone again, drummed her fingers on the table briefly. Impatient. Or nervous.

He rolled his shoulders too. _In you go, Ramon._

He strolled up to the table, smiling easily. “Hey there,” he said.

She lifted her head, giving him an icy look. “Can I help you?”

Her eyes were the color of root beer in sunlight. He loved root beer. Man, drug dealers should not have pretty eyes. He was gonna make it a law. 

“Just wondering if that’s the book I’m looking for,” he said, holding her gaze.

The ice melted, a little. “Depends,” she said. “What’s the book you’re looking for?”

He slid into the chair opposite her, angling it so he could jump up and run after her in case he tipped her off and she rabbited. “Oh, you know how it with these German titles,” he said. “The shortest word in it’s got like eight syllables and I can’t even pronounce it. Can I just see the cover?”

Keeping her eyes on his, she tilted the book up so he could see the front cover - and the tiny ziploc baggie of pills resting on the table underneath.

_Yes._

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s the one.”

She dropped the book again. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s mine right now. I’d need some good incentive to let it go.”

He eyed her. “How much are we talking?” He fished in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie for a thick roll-up of twenties, showing her the edge of it as he held it in his hand.

“You must really need this book.”

“What can I say? Word on the street is there’s going to be a pop quiz.”

She studied his hand as if trying to estimate the dollar amount by the thickness of the roll. Probably she was. “I’ll take two hundred.”

“For that book? It doesn’t even have that many pages.”

“I think you’ll find the quality of the information is more than worth it.”

He shook his head, pulled off the rubber band, and peeled off ten of the bills, passing them over.

She pushed the book in his direction. He slid his hand under the front cover, palmed the ziploc, and stuffed it in the kangaroo pocket. “Say,” he said, twirling the book around and glancing casually over the pages. “You got any more, uh, copies of this book?”

Her brows lifted. “How many does one man need?”

“It’s just I have some friends. And we study together. A lot.”

“It’ll be another two hundred each.”

“Steep,” he managed, his heart thudding hard. She’d agreed too quickly and easily to be just some undergrad with spare drugs. “How long will that take? Because we were hoping to have a study sesh tonight.”

“A couple of hours.”

Okay, wow, she was definitely a dealer. “Cool,” he said. “Should be able to swing it.”

“Great,” she said. “One more thing. You’re under arrest.”

He went totally blank. Blue Screen of Death. Of all the words in the whole world, those were the last ones that were supposed to come out of her mouth right now. “Wait," he stuttered, "what?”

“I said, you’re under arrest.” She reached in her pocket and slapped a badge on the table. “For possession and intent to distribute controlled substances.”

The only thing he could think to say was, “No, I’m not! You’re under arrest! For actually selling controlled substances!”

She snorted. “Nice try. Look at the badge, buddy, I’m the police officer here.”

He laid his hands on the table. “Okay, look. I’m going to reach inside my pocket here and show you my badge.”

“By all means, I’d love to - oh,” she finished very softly as he placed his own CCPD badge, identical to hers except for the number, on the table.

“Yeah,” he said. “Oh.”

They looked at the badges, at each other, at the giant book of German poetry that neither of them had been interested. Cisco was feeling dumber by the second.

She cleared her throat. “Can I - ?” She gestured.

"Sure," he said. They traded badges. He pulled out a notebook and wrote down her number and noticed that she was doing the same. They traded them back.

“I,” she said. “Um.”

“Well,” he said. “This is awkward.”

She hiked her chin, a dignified gesture undercut by the blush that had spread to her hairline. “Are you with the forty-sixth?”

Good guess. “Yep. Officer Francisco Ramon. Cisco to my friends. And you’d be with the eighty-third.” That was the other precinct covering the university area.

“Officer Caitlin Snow. Yes.”

He frowned at her. “Wait a minute, I got your number from a guy at a party last night. How long have you been doing this sting?”

“What time is it now?”

His brows went up. “Explain.”

“I took the phone and the pills off a girl in detox early this morning. I got your text and I thought, if I could nail a buyer, maybe they’d go for a deal and point me in the direction of a bigger seller. Or even who she’s buying from.”

That wasn’t actually the worst plan he’d ever heard. Still … “I’d just like to point out that this is the forty-sixth’s case.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Campus police came to the CCPD commissioner, not a particular squad. The eighty-third’s jurisdiction covers the south end of the university area. And I’d just like to point out, we’re in the south end of campus.”

Okay, fine, she had him there. He thought about arguing it, but this was a big problem, and not getting smaller if two dumb cops who’d just tried to arrest each other sat here having a pissing contest over territory. 

“Fair enough,” he said, and she blinked as if she’d expected a lot more of an argument. “So, uh, could I maybe get the money back? I had to sign so much paperwork for that.”

“Oh, of course. But I’ll need the pills back for the same reason.”

They traded, much less cloak-and-daggerly than before. She studied the plastic bag. “I guess I’m at square one,” she said with a sigh, putting it away.

“Me too,” he mumbled, tucking the money back into his pocket. “So, how much shit are you going to get for trying to arrest a fellow cop?”

“A lot,” she admitted, scrunching up her face. “Ugh. They’re going to love it. You?”

“The jokes in the bullpen, the signs on my locker - ”

She nodded. “They will never, ever let it go.”

“Oh man, I could go on to catch the grodiest serial killer of all time, bring down mob bosses, whatever. But in forty years at my retirement party, they’ll still just want to talk about how I tried to arrest a fellow cop on my very first undercover sting.”

“You did good up to that point,” she said. “You really sold it. It never crossed my mind you weren’t a student here.”

That wasn’t quite as gratifying as it should be. No dude on his side of twenty-five wanted someone this cute telling him that he looked like a college kid.

He leaned forward. “You want to look like a real go-getter right now?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “In what way?”

“First off, neither of us ever mention this to anyone else, ever.”

“Agreed.”

He grinned a little at how fast she said it. “Instead, we’ll tell our sergeants that we’re fostering inter-squad cooperation and expanding our investigation through different avenues.”

She tilted her head. “You want to partner up on this.”

“You follow your leads, I follow mine, and we figure out where they meet in the middle.”

“I can do that,” she said. “What kind of leads do you have so far?”

He looked around. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to get into it.”

"Maybe not,” she said. “You know O'Conley’s, right?”

He snorted. “Do I know O'Conley’s, she says.” Every cop in town knew that bar. You could find half of them there after shift.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Okay, fine. Do you know the back corner booth?”

“With the big table?”

“That’s the one. Meet me there in an hour?”

He grinned broadly. “Last one there buys the drinks.”

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of that one post floating around Tumblr about an undercover cop posing as a john and arresting someone for prostitution who turned out to be another undercover cop. Legend has it they got married a year later. I thought that was stinkin’ adorable, but the whole sex work thing is so fraught that I switched it to hard drugs instead. Not that drugs aren’t a fraught topic as well, but it didn’t have quite the same possibility for grossness.


End file.
